Test WLAN For Interference

As wireless signals travel through the medium, they undergo a loss in the signal strength due to signal attenuation caused by the medium and obstacles. This attenuation is exponential and the signal drops to several orders within a short distance. With the loss of signal strength, bit error rate (BER) of the transmitted data increases. Radio frequency (RF) interference from other sources can further increase the BER. This can result in sluggish performance, as the sending station may not receive acknowledgements for its transmitted data from the receiving station.

Moreover, this may require the sending station to resend the data packet after timing out on its wait for the acknowledgement from the receiver. This will continue for as long as there is a proper acknowledgement from the receiver and could take several seconds per packet.

Most end-users have devices such as cordless phones, microwave ovens and access points operating within WLAN environments, without having any idea about what threat they constitute to the sound functioning of the network.